Star Wars 1313 Dev Reflects On Its Cancellation In Wake Of The Mandalorian's Popularity

In the wake of the big success and acclaim of the Star Wars TV show The Mandalorian, which is about a bounty hunter in space, God of War director Cory Barlog tweeted that he hopes there is a developer out there trying to make a new Star Wars bounty hunter video game. Star Wars fans know that this was in the works, but failed to materialize.

Celia Hodent, a former Lucasfilm developer, responded to Barlog by pointing out that she and her team tried to do just that with Star Wars 1313. Announced in 2012, the game was a third-person action-adventure title set beneath Coruscant where you play as a bounty hunter. However, when Disney acquired Lucasfilm, the mega-corporation closed developer LucasArts and canceled all their games, including Star Wars 1313.

Developer Patrick Wren worked on this game, and he responded to Hodent's tweet, "If only people could have seen what was coming."

Hodent went on to say that there is no chance that Star Wars 1313 will be revived. "It was very painful for the team... It won't get revived.. it was canned too many years ago now (2013)," she said.

Hodent also clarified that Star Wars 1313 wasn't at the finish line of its development, but she was happy with what the team had. "There was still a lot of work ahead. But what we had was magical (I'll admit I might be biased)," she said.

Disney was at one point a big name in game development, releasing the Disney Infinity, Epic Mickey, and Split/Second franchises, among others, but has in recent years backed away for internal game development. Disney chairman Bob Iger has acknowledged that Disney's game development track record has been spotty, which is why the company is now pursuing a different strategy where it licenses its games to developers, like EA, to make Star Wars games. EA hasn't had the best luck with third-person games using the license. Aside from the successful Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, it had another game in the works with Uncharted's Amy Hennig at the helm that was canceled.